“Rosalind, you can’t really intend anything so dreadful! Oh, at present you are so young, you are all living in the same house, it does not make so much difference. But to sacrifice yourself, to give up your own life, to relinquish everything for a set of half—”
“You had better not make me angry,” she said. He had sprung to his feet and was pacing about in great excitement, his figure relieved against the blaze of the fire, while she sat in the shadow at one side, protected from the glow. “What am I giving up? In the first place, I know nothing that I am giving up; and I confess that it amuses me, Roland, to see you so excited about my life. I should like to hear what you are going to do with your own.”
“Can’t you understand?” he cried, hastily and in confusion, “that the one might—that the one might—involve perhaps—” And here the young man stopped and looked helplessly at her, not daring to risk what he had for the uncertainty of something better. But it was very hard, when he had gone so far, to refrain.
“Might involve perhaps— No, I can’t understand,” Rosalind said, almost with unconcern. “What I do understand is that you can’t hunt forever if you are going to be any good in life. And you don’t even hunt as a man ought that means to make hunting his object. Do something, Roland, as if you meant it!—that is what I am always telling you.”
“And don’t I always tell you the same thing, that I am no hero. I can’t hold on to an object, as you say. What do you mean by an object? I want a happy life. I should like very well to be kind to people, and do my duty and all that, but as for an object, Rosalind! If you expect me to become a reformer or a philanthropist or anything of that sort, or make a great man of myself—”
Rosalind shook her head softly in her shadowed corner. “I don’t expect that,” she said, with a tone of regret. “I might have done so, perhaps, at one time. At first one thinks every boy can do great things, but that is only for a little while, when one is without experience.”
“You see you don’t think very much of my powers, for all you say,” he cried, hastily, with the tone of offence which the humblest can scarcely help assuming when taken at his own low estimate. Roland knew very well that he had no greatness in him, but to have the fact acknowledged with this regretful certainty was somewhat hard.
“That is quite a different matter,” said Rosalind. “Only a few men (I see now) can be great. I know nobody of that kind,” she added, with once more that tone of regret, shaking her head. “But you can always do something, not hang on amusing yourself, for that is all you ever do, so far as I can see.”
“What does your Uncle John do?” he cried; “you have a great respect for him, and so have I; he is just the best man going. But what does he do? He loafs about; he goes out a great deal when he is in town; he goes to Scotland for the grouse, he goes to Homburg for his health, he comes down and sees you, and then back to London again. Oh, I think that’s all right, but if I am to take him for my example—and I don’t know where I could find a better—”
“There is no likeness between your case and his. Uncle John is old, he has nothing particular given him to do; he is—well, he is Uncle John. But you, Roland, you are just my age.”